Spike Lee wasn’t the first to retweet the erroneous address on Twitter blindly accepted by many as that of George Zimmerman, the man who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last month. But the filmmaker’s message — sent last week to his 240,000 Twitter followers — was the most viral.

The problem is — the address does not belong to Zimmerman, but to Elaine and David McClain, an elderly couple in their 70s. After Lee’s retweet, the couple has been forced to flee their home and live in a hotel given the rapidly spreading threats of violence

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.